Friday Sep.06, 2019

Instagram's 1st date

_"It's just Instagram. Your Tinder profile will be fine."_

Hey Snackers,

Impossible Foods. Beyond Meat. Four more plant-based brands joined the meat-free party just this week. You're only as good as your faux-beef name creativty, so we're ranking 'em here:

Kellogg's plant-based burger: "Incogmeato"
Hormel's plant-based beef: "Happy Little Plants"
Kroger's plant-based deli meats: "Simple Truth"
Tyson's plant-based shrimp: "New Wave"

Before the big August jobs report arrives today, markets jumped Thursday as China and the US agreed to chat trade war again in early October.

Lovely

Match drops 5% as Facebook Dating just happened

Whip out the pint of gelato and romcom marathon... Tinder-owner Match is feeling the pain as Facebook's dating feature goes live in the US (just update your app and opt-in if you're looking to mingle). Technically, Facebook told us last year that this was coming, but here's the love story timeline.

1st date (fall 2018): Colombia. The magic begins when Facebook started testing in the land of Arepas.
1st trip (winter 2019) Latin America. Facebook expands the tests regionally to Mexico and Argentina.
1st fight (spring 2019) Feedback. Listening to early users, Facebook updates the feature to make it easier to set up a profile (and creepily proposes a pic for you).
Facebook makes it Facebook official (today): Another 19 countries enjoy access, including the US (Europe waits 'till 2020).

"If you're a bird, I'm a bird"... The Facebook dating concept is that simple. Since Facebook knows what you like/click/join/share, Zuck thinks he can play match-maker better than Tinder. But the most unique feature we could find in our Snacks research is "Secret Crush":

Facebook Dating defaults to not matching you with friends, but there are 9 exceptions.
If your sophomore Geography class partner is the one that got away, you can "Secret Crush" tag them.
If they unknowingly reciprocate, Facebook makes the connection (warning: You get 9 "Secret Crushes" max).

Instagram is Facebook's surprise +1... That's what crushed Match. Match investors have known for months what Facebook was up to. What they didn't know was how much Facebook's Insta would be involved. Turns out Facebook integrates photos from Insta profiles into the dating feature. Since Instagram is where a whole generation's digital-selves obsessively live, FB Dating is now much more of a threat than Match expected.

Discount

WeWork plans to massively devalue itself to save the IPO

This isn't how I imagined my dream IPO... According to WSJ, WeWork is thinking about dropping its valuation in order to IPO down to $20B-$30B. That's half of where it was. The last time WeWork raised money, its valuation reached $47B. This update is just a few weeks after it officially filed its IPO paperwork (aka "the S-1"). Here's what wounded the coworking unicorn:

What WeWork wanted: Investors to be sooo excited to own We stock that there would be overdemand, requiring an increase in the planned offer price.
What actually happened: The opposite. Powerful investors are telling WeWork the stock is too pricey, and nobody wants to buy at that price when it goes public soon.
The reason: Lack of transparency. The IPO paperwork WeWork issued last month didn't clarify key details about its (un)profitability. One investor called WeWork's S-1 "a masterpiece of obfuscation."
The result: WeWork's reportedly dropping the price, basically putting its stock "on sale for 50% off" so investors can get comfortable enough to buy shares at the IPO. None of this is official yet.

Tough day for WeWork shareholders (they already exist)... Even though WeWork hasn't IPO'd, its employees, early investors, and venture capitalists already own shares (some as compensation for work). Now the stock could be worth 1/2 what We was hoping for. WeWork's valuation got (very) high as a private company, so when shares hit the public market (and anyone can buy them) their price could come down to reality.

What else we’re Snackin’

Him: Lululemon jumps 4% courtesy of some guys — men's sales surged 35%
Waves: Sonos whips up its own portable speakers (finally) that is weather-proof
People: Goldman Sachs has a new CEO — and partners are quitting as he makes his mark
IOU: Stripe is all over payment processing as the world's most valuable private fintech company, and now it's offering loans
eDrive: GM calls shotgun on Google — the carmaker's integrating its apps and voice assistant into cars by 2021
Cancelled: British snap elections won't happen, meaning another Brexit delay is most likely

Friday

Happy Jobs Friday, aka the big government jobs report for the month of August

Disclosure: Authors of this Snacks own shares of Lululemon and Beyond Meat

20190906-945901-2851066

Latest Stories

Friday, Apr 26th

13m

What’s happening

Pop Quiz!

Sales of what are up 136% since 2019?

Don't be a sucka

$70B

Alphabet shares are soaring in the after-market session, with a initial jump of more than 10% implying a gain of upwards of about $200B in market value when the stock opens tomorrow morning.

Google’s parent company crushed earnings expectations, initiated a cash dividend for the first time, and authorized a fresh $70B in share repurchases for good measure. The market likes it very much.

What’s up doc?

13h

HOP TO IT

Joshua Topolsky

We get results!

14h

This earnings season is fully operational

Acrobatic Accounting

So, you want to join the circus?

Megan DeMatteo

Rani Molla

16h

No, Apple hasn’t cut its Vision Pro production estimates in half

Quite a few news outlets are reporting that Apple thinks it’s only going to sell 400,000 to 450,000 Vision Pros in 2024, compared a “market consensus” of 700,000 to 800,000. They’re all citing a note from Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo.

Obviously there’s no question that Apple’s $3,500 face computer will have a limited audience and could be a huge flop, but this also doesn’t seem like accurate news.

The issue is that 1) this 400,000 number isn’t new. Back in July of 2023, the Financial Times reported that Apple planned to make fewer than 400,000 units in 2024, reducing its initial projections of 1M units, citing two people close to Apple and, the Chinese contract manufacturer assembling the device. 2) It's unclear who was estimating 700,000-800,000 Vision Pros in the first place, but it appears that it was Ming-Chi Kuo himself?

Apple reportedly cuts Vision Pro production due to low demand

Seriously, relax

17h

Economy keeps on humming along

Meta exhaustingly tries to merge the metaverse and AI

Gonna have to rename the company... again

Rani Molla19h

Chris Black

Black’s Gold

20h

Can you justify a $335 trashcan? Yes.

Here’s how.

24h

Biden signs a bill that could ban TikTok — but the #ForYou fight is far from over

Jamie Wilde

Read

24h

Gucci’s parent braces for sliding sales, as luxury demand unravels over high prices

Nia Warfield

Read

Matt Phillips

4/24/24

Chipotle continues to go on a tear, hitting a sales record

Hey it might not be the kind of AI stock investors are all hot and bothered over, but don’t sleep on the burrito business.

Chipotle posted much better-than-expected results on Wednesday, with sales rising 14% to a record $2.70B in the first quarter, which is like a billion additions of guac.

Profits jumped 23% to $359M.

Chipotle has quietly cruised higher over the last year. It’s up 63%, compared to the 24.5% gain for the S&P 500 over the 12 months through Wednesday’s close. Not bad for a rice-and-beans based business model.

Rani Molla

4/24/24

Facebook had great earnings, the market hates it

Facebook reported impressive earnings. Record first-quarter revenue thanks to AI! Profit up 117% compared to a year earlier! But at the same time, its capital expenditures are going up and it’s expecting second quarter revenue potentially lower than analyst estimates. So in other words, the future doesn’t look as bright as the present.

All in all the stock is down more than 10%. (Basically the opposite of what happened with Tesla yesterday).

Net net

4/24/24

Earnings can’t stop, won’t stop

Rani Molla

4/24/24

Why Tesla investors are holding on to hope for a cheap car

Despite terrible earnings numbers last night — declining vehicle sales, disappointing revenue and profit, enormous spending — Tesla stock is up more than 10% as of midday. That’s a welcome move for the car company, that’s been among the worst performers this year in the S&P 500.

Why the about face?

While Reuters reported earlier this month that Tesla is no longer making its long-awaited $25,000 mass-market car — news sent the stock, already suffering from headwinds across the EV industry, down even further— Tesla reported during its earnings that it’s going to make cheaper cars than it currently has.

Before the second half of next year, Tesla said it will release “more affordable models” that “will utilize aspects of the next generation platform as well as aspects of our current platforms, and will be able to be produced on the same manufacturing lines as our current vehicle line-up.”

So rather than release the $25,000 Model 2, Tesla is incorporating some of that technology into its existing models. UBS called it the Franken-3Y2.